Carrier route record

DLDFW→DTW

Delta Air Lines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Detroit

Flights: 1,404
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 40%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on DFW to DTW lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,404 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's DFW to DTW record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 57 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,381 completed flights

Avg delay

100 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.57%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.6%

Every carrier on DFW to DTW, 3,506 flights

These figures cover 1,404 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on DFW to DTW

Delta flew 1,404 of the 3,506 flights on DFW to DTW, about 40% of it. Its 83.3% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 94.7% to American at 67.5%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on DFW to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	19	94.7%	51 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,404	83.3%	100 min	1.57%	B
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	227	79.8%	69 min	1.76%	B
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	235	78.5%	88 min	0.85%	B+
American Airlines	1,621	67.5%	70 min	2.53%	C

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on DFW to DTW

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am365 flights93.1%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm676 flights81.3%
2pm–5pm52 flights82.0%
5pm–8pm311 flights76.5%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.1% of the time, against 76.5% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 676 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on DFW to DTW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.October best, July worst

July is the worst month at 71.9% on time, 21 points below October, the best at 92.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.9%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 42% of the 23,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
5%

40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 23,031 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 9,698 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.57% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 986 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.3% on time across 1,405 flights, 7 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 7 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,404 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on DFW to DTW

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 92.7% on time and July 71.9%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,381 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures